


I Will Finish What You Started

by lovecherishprotect16



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Ghost(s), Hurt/Comfort, Lightsabers, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Force, Young Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23242015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovecherishprotect16/pseuds/lovecherishprotect16
Summary: Anakin's heart shatters anew with every click that brings Ben's new lightsaber together. A one-shot of Anakin watching Ben put together his Kylo Ren lightsaber and getting emotional. He might need a little help recovering.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	I Will Finish What You Started

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first fic, so please be nice! But constructive criticism is always appreciated! I think this will be a one-shot, but if the inspiration strikes, I might do more Ben/Kylo and Anakin Force Ghost peanut gallery/encounters. Enjoy and please leave some love and comments!

Anakin’s heart splintered with every clink that emitted from Ben’s new lightsaber components coming into place. Ben sat cross-legged on the ground in his new room on the Supremacy, seemingly deep in meditation, but looking closer, you would see a twitch of an eyelid, lips press together into a slight grimace that revealed further inner turmoil than the boy trying so hard to prove himself a man would be willing to admit.  
Metal pieces, large and small, float in the air, shuddering with every minute twitch from the boy constructing it, but also coming together to form a rough-hewn, but singular whole. Ben’s hands, bare and still dusted with dirt from the slaughter at the Jedi temple that was once his home, tremble slightly as he directs the components to come together as best as he can remember them to fit. His right is slightly extended towards the parts, but in his left hand resting palm-up on his knee, is a clear Kyber crystal, waiting to be meditated over and matched to the owner’s soul, to be made his own.  
It has been many years since he has had to assemble a lightsaber, and he wants this one to nowhere near resemble his first. “I was a different person then” he’ll tell himself, “It’s not me. No one saw the real me but Snoke, the only one willing to listen to my nightmares and ambitions and was willing to help me.” These thoughts tumble through his mind in raging battle with memories of what he has done, of the friends he has killed, betrayed, abandoned. Guilt and horror gnaw at him like a ravenous beast through those memories, fighting with justifications for them, hatred at Skywalker for what he did, for his inability to recognize the true help that Ben needed.  
Ben’s eyebrows twitch into a slight frown and Anakin, who stands beside him as a Force Ghost and almost as young as Ben again, immediately reaches forward in an attempt to smooth the frown away, but his hands fall through Ben’s body only resulting in a slight chilly wind for Ben and further grief for Anakin.  
“Ben please.” He chokes out, sitting down cross-legged beside him. “I… I understand what you’re going through, probably more than anyone else in the galaxy could, and I know that…”  
He reaches out to gently touch Ben’s frowning face, “that you feel so alone right now. That your master has betrayed you, and that you’re so angry you want to kill something and then cry. That you are the only one who truly knows what you want. That even those closest to you don’t know you.”  
Images of flames and cries of brotherhood and love flash through Anakin’s thoughts as his hands, trembling with emotion move to brush Ben’s trembling right hand that stills as Anakin touches it, “That no one could ever truly know you. That you don’t have a choice but to accept and feed the darkness clawing at your heart right now.”  
Anakin’s ghostly blue form ripples with emotion that Ben could not see or even sense if he wanted to. “I made the same mistakes you’re making Ben, but its not too late for you. You can choose to turn back to your parents, ask for forgiveness and understanding, they can help you!” Ben’s frown deepens and the lightsaber components swirl around each other faster, his hand closes around the Kyber crystal in his hand.  
“Just please” Anakin takes a deep breath and his form stops flickering. He moves his hand to cup Ben’s cheek again, tears clouding his bright blue eyes, “please don’t make my mistakes. The pain it causes a parent to watch their child make the same mistakes they made is beyond words because you feel as if its you making those same mistakes again, that its become a part of your nature so much that your innocent children are corrupted. It makes both your own life’s sins and the sins of your children all the worse. For both our sakes, please don’t do this!”  
Ben shows no sign of hearing Anakin’s pleading except for an increase of the turmoil surrounding the creation of his lightsaber. The cross guard snaps into place so roughly that Anakin winces. “Please Ben!” He comes to his knees to place both hands on either sides of his grandson’s face, “Please don’t do this! Snoke is using you for your gift. I know what that’s like, you will become a slave to him and to your own darkness. Please!” He rests his forehead against his grandson’s, tears that Ben will never feel dripping onto his cheeks, “Please Ben. Come home.”  
Ben still is unreactive, and the last components of his lightsaber quietly screw into place, completed lightsaber save for his crystal hanging in the air, waiting for its master to claim it. His grandson looks almost at peace at first, his face having relaxed from the frown, but looking so heavy that the boy of before seems to have aged so much. His deep brown eyes open to meet where Anakin’s are, but unseeing of the form of his grandfather. These eyes had none of the mischievous spark they held as a boy, the slight twinkle so distinctive of the Solo wit that Ben had inherited or the Skywalker spunk he showed as a Padawan. No, these eyes were solid granite, revealing nothing of the emotion behind them, indicating nothing but resolve. He sharply beckons to the floating lightsaber to rest in his outstretched right hand and he examines his handiwork.  
Realizing the futility of his begging, Anakin’s hand falls limp to his side. “Please don’t let it be like this” he whispers, “I can’t bear to watch this.” He slowly scoots back until his back hits the wall, eyes vacant and full of horrors of the past and to come. “My poor daughter. My grandson…” Anakin begins to breath sharply in and out, a panic attacking starting to overtake him, until a hand comes to rest on his own.  
“Breath, Anakin.” The voice commands, “In. Out. In. Out. That’s it, focus. Your grandson needs you.”  
“He can’t hear me Obi-Wan, I tried. I tried… so hard” The tears spring again unbidden.  
Anakin opens his eyes to see Obi-Wan sitting next to where he’s pushed against the wall, knees to his chest, and his old master occasionally glancing back at where Ben sits examining his new lightsaber. Obi-Wan frowns, “He’s finished it then. A shoddy piece of work that looks. It might explode in his face as soon as he turns it on. Might teach the boy something.” He turns back to Anakin who’s staring vacantly again, tears still falling, at the ghosts of his life’s regrets about to be replayed in the life of his beloved grandson. He firmly grasps both of Anakin’s hands as only another Force Ghost can do, “You have to try again.” Anakin eyes focus again at the contact and he shakes his head to clear it, its not about him anymore its about saving Ben, “I told you, I already tried. He can’t see me, he can’t hear me. And at this point… I don’t know if he would listen if he could hear, look at him.”  
Obi-Wan looks over at Ben again, who he’s come to think fondly of, like another son, and he shakes his head to Anakin, “Anakin, you should know by now that a Skywalker can never truly make himself a slave to the Darkside, they’re much to bullheaded for that.” Anakin chuckles ruefully at that.  
Obi-Wan smirks, and then grows serious, “If I had given up on you regardless of how lost you seemed at the time as easily as you have given up just now, I would never have gone to Mustafar. Or to the Death Star many many years later. The funny thing about love, no matter who its for, is that its unconditional and we’re willing to do desperate, dangerous, and powerful things for the people we love.”  
His eyes pierce Anakin’s, “I love you Anakin, and I came for you both times out of love, just as your son did. I may not be of the power of your bloodline, but my sacrifice was a part of the bigger whole that lead to you coming back to the light. And if you, the Chosen One, believe that you truly cannot reach your grandson, who’s suffering the same way you once did?” He smiles broadly, a twinkle in his eye, “Then no one can ever be redeemed, it must be impossible.”  
Obi-Wan rises to his feet and hauls Anakin up as well. Both men come back over to Ben who hasn’t moved, but now has his eyes closed, meditating over his Kyber crystal, the same blank look across his face that broke Anakin’s heart. The crystal glows through his fist a bright blood-red, filling with the pain, resentment, and anger in the boy’s heart to create a powerful weapon that could do unspeakable horrors in the name of justice and power in the hands of his conflicted grandson. Anakin could not let this happen.  
Obi-Wan takes Anakin’s hand and leads him back to sit cross-legged in front of Ben while he stands behind his old friend with a hand on his shoulder as an anchor.  
“You have got to reach him, Anakin. You have the strength, you love him too much to let him go. I’m right here, and I will help you. You just have to believe that he can hear you, and he will.”  
Anakin takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, clearing his mind, and focusing on directing his feelings, love, guilt, fear, and anger, as sharply as he can with Obi-Wan as his anchor. Drawing on his bone-deep connection to both the Force and Ben, he reaches out and touches the hand Ben has fisted around his Kyber crystal, “Snoke’s promises are empty, Ben. He offers you the galaxy, but you will find only unhappiness and pain down the path he’s offered you, far beyond what you can imagine. I love you, grandson. Please don’t make my mistakes. I believe in you unconditionally, just as my son believed in me, and my master believed in my, and it brought me home. Its not too late, its never too late.”  
Ben’s eyes are still closed, but he raised his head as if listening intently, his blank look shaken off into focus, whether to his grandfather or not, Anakin could not definitely tell, but with the Force raging through him as it was, he felt fairly sure that he could hear him. Growing tired, Anakin gathered the remainder of his energy into one final “I love you” before he collapsed, his Force ghost glow quite dimmed, into Obi-Wan’s arms, both of them breathing heavily.  
“Did he hear me?” Anakin pants to Obi-Wan.  
“I think so? We’ll find out.” Obi-Wan responds.  
They watch intently as Ben’s eyes snap open and he looks around the room cautiously as if looking for the source of the voice he heard. Seeing no one, he glances down to the crystal glowing in his fist with a combination of awe and conflict.  
He clenches his fist around it again, closing his eyes as if in pain and grunts, rocking backward until his knees hit his chest, his lightsaber falling to the ground in front of him. “I can’t do this” He gasps. “I’m not strong enough to say no to Snoke. I… I want to be like my grandfather.”  
“No!” Anakin cries from the ground, “No you don’t! That path leads only to pain, Ben.”  
“Luke Skywalker said he loved me, and he betrayed me and feared my power. He’s weak, I am strong. I can be remade.” Ben clenches around the Kyber crystal so hard that a small cracking sound comes from it.  
“Luke made a mistake Ben! He is just as guilt-ridden right now as you are, its not too late to talk to him! Please Ben, he can help you, your family can help you, if you just listen!”  
“No… no…” Ben’s shakes his head, fighting his inner demons, clutching the crystal so that it cracks again. He screams “NO!” And every piece of furniture in the room is thrown into the walls. He sits curled up with his forehead on his knees, clutching his long hair breathing hard for a long minute, then his knees and hands fall away limply, his head still bowed. Ben raises his bloodshot eyes to the lightsaber resting on the floor untouched in front of him and he reaches forward to grasp it in a shaking fist. He scrambles to open the crystal compartment and clicks his cracked crystal into place before sliding it shut.  
Ben Solo remains there on the floor beside his grandfather, while Kylo Ren smoothly rises to his feet, all traces of hesitation gone from his visage, the trembling in his hands chased away by adrenaline and hatred coursing through his veins. He thumbs the trigger and the crackling beams of red energy shoots from the cross beams and top of his new, but fundamentally broken lightsaber. It is a jagged, raw blade that seems close to exploding beyond the parameters of the hilt with every second, but that somehow still holds together: a perfectly fractured weapon for a fractured man.  
“Let the past die.” Kylo Ren whispers. “I will kill it if I have to.”  
A quiet sob emits from Anakin at his lost grandson’s words and he lays on the ground in Obi-Wan’s comforting embrace where he fell as as Kylo strode out of the room, dusting the dirt from the slaughter of the temple off his hands, and lightsaber clipped to his belt.  
“I will never give up on you, Ben” Anakin says softly, “Never. Skywalkers always come back for their lost ones, no matter how lost they seem.”


End file.
